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Monday, April 1, 2013

More about uploading photos to FamilySearch Family Tree

I got the following comment from Anonymous recently and
decided to elaborate with a response:

So, I've
had no luck uploading pictures to FamilySearch on my Apple computer. It looks
like the website has changed a few things in the last week, but the program is
still not working right on my Apple. There are untagged pictures I've uploaded
showing (with exclamation points) when I look at "My Photos," but
when I click on the exclamation point, the screen that loads and should allow
me to tag them comes up basically blank. I tried both on Safari and Firefox. If
you have an Apple and have been successful, what browser and version of that
browser are you using? (I'm still on an older Firefox 3.6.18 and don't want to
update.) Thanks for any help you can give me.

I guess the first question is whether or not Anonymous has
registered and has access to both FamilySearch.org and FamilySearch.org/photos?
If you haven’t signed into both programs this could be the problem. But it
appears that this user is having technical problems with the program itself.

The two programs are linked together and if a photo is
uploaded to the Photos program, a thumbnail should show up for that person in
Family Tree. The Photos program is still in Beta test and so changes are to be
expected. I have noticed some features,
such a setting the default photo, which have not worked well, but seem to be
working at the time of this post.

I tried uploading three photos as I was writing this post
and all three uploaded successfully. I am using the Google Chrome Bowser
Version 26.0.1410.43 but I also use Firefox and Safari. Interestingly, the
smallest of the three photos took the longest to load. The comment is correct,
the photos show a red exclamation point after loading. This tells the user that
the photos have yet to be tagged to any one individual.

After clicking on the photo (it is not necessary to click on
the red tag) I get the tagging screen and was able to tag the individuals in
the photo. However, the program now has you go to the Tagged Person screen to
connect the person to Family Tree and to do any editing. It is helpful to have
the person’s ID number when you try to connect the person to Family Tree,
especially if the person has a common name.

For one of my ancestors, George Jarvis LWYL-M7G, I note that several copies of
the exact same photo have been loaded into the program. Apparently, I cannot
edit the duplicates and only the people who have uploaded the photos can remove
them. I also note with George Jarvis LWYL-M7G
that there is at least one “Restricted” photo, meaning it does not conform to
the FamilySearch standards or appears to be copyrighted. I am not sure how
these issues are going to be resolved with various family members submitting
photos.

In short, using an Apple iMac computer and Chrome, I had no
trouble uploading three photos and tagging them to the people in Family Tree. I
can only assume that the commentator’s issues lie elsewhere. My best guess is that there is something about the photos he is uploading, either the file type or size that is making a problem.

4 comments:

At the FHC I volunteer at, we are unable to upload photos to the Family Tree. Most of the computers run Windows XP with Firefox 3.6. The only computer we are able to upload photos with has XP too, but runs the newest version of Firefox. It seems to me that uploading photos with outdated versions of web browsers just doesn't work.

Thanks for the information, James and Anonymous! I am the Anonymous one who wrote the post about not being able to get my pictures to finish uploading. I just downloaded Chrome and it worked just fine! I think it is that my Safari and Firefox are old versions. (Again, I don't really want to update them, as I don't like some of the changes they've made.) But, using Chrome worked with no problem (at least to get the pictures tagged). Now I just need to learn to get it on Family Search. Thanks again! ~Suzanne

P.S. Glad I thought to come look on your more recent posts. I was watching for a reply to my comment from the other day (kept hitting reload to see if anyone replied) and would have missed this! ~Suzanne